Tag: FUNKO

Oh my goodness this is tougher than I thought it would be.
I spent the last 3 plus months of my life doing my dream job, but I am having difficulty articulating the value add. That makes updating the old resume more challenging.

Let’s start:
The end of July I was at wits’ end trying to find something before my unemployment benefits ran out.
Low and behold, I was asked to interview for a job at a company I knew nothing about, except that they had gotten a lot of my money over the years.
It was the hottest day of the year!
I had to drive over 50 miles round trip!
I really had to convince myself to go on this adventure!
Man! I am so glad that I did!
In the end, I decided to go to the interview, if for no other reason than to answer the question about whether or not I opted out of a job possibility. I decided it would be a nice stop on my job search journey and it never hurts to tune your interview and interpersonal skills.
I was excited! I feel I went into this interview with the right mindset, so I am hoping to draw on this experience as I embark down the path of total rejection, again.

This was exciting. Here was a small company growing up fast! Who wouldn’t want to be part of that excitement? Lots of changes. Lots of growing pains. Lots of vision. Oh watch out for the fiefdoms! Somehow, that word seems more pertinent here than anywhere else I have ever used it!

They liked me. I liked them. I took the job!
The first ten minutes of my very, first day, I encounter drama between the QA Lead and the Lead ERP Dev.
It’s hard to operate in a vacuum and even worse to be in the eye of a power struggle.
This team knows how to get their stuff done, what they don’t know is what matters and to whom. This is what I spent the next couple of months solving.
When I left we were on the crux of a fully-agreed-upon cadence negotiated with the business stakeholders and mapped to the projected trajectory for continued maturity.
I am gonna miss this place!

Thank you Green Day for some of my favorite lyrics and expressing such emotion in your work!
DISCLAIMER – what follows is a random stream of thought that provides a deeper view into me.
For the first time in my entire life, I am allowed – er, encouraged – to learn about pop culture. That is kind of awesome.
Just a quick catch up, as I got busy doing life again, rather than pondering about it, the following things happened:
– Started the new job. Like it? Love it? Opportunity? How am I handling it?
– Driving a lot. Long way to work. How am I doing on the interstate?
– Daughter is getting married soon. How’s that going? Wow!
– My beautiful grandbabies are back in school. They are growing up way too fast!
To sum it up: there’s a boatload of things happening in my day-to-day life. In my mind’s eye, I see my mother repeating her mantra about how to handle life, “That’s life, it is so daily.”
To be fair, she probably said it with a great deal of enthusiasm.
I heard this my whole life. I interpreted it when I was about 17.
I have reassessed the meaning, recently.
My mother? Well she isn’t really capable of communicating long distance anymore. This saddens me. What I wouldn’t give to hear, “Honey, that is life, it is so daily.” just one more time.

Kind of knew I would. Not being arrogant, it is one of those things. You get it when you ‘click’ with the situation. The hardest part is locating that situation. I got lucky.
This last week has been a whirlwind.
Onboarded officially last Thursday.
Went to Colorado for the weekend.
Started the new job on Monday.
That is a lot of activities in a very short period of time!.

I am figuring out my secret sauce.
Today – I truly became comfortable with the tools I need to do my job.
That is pretty good. I have only had the machine for two full days. I haven’t been provided a map to the environment, I have had to just do it on my own.

So technically, I work for 3 Directors.
Director of Digital Innovation. Don’t get it. How does it fit?
*Director of ERP – got it. We do a lot of ecommerce.
Director of Operations – this is the most overworked, under-valued member of this team. We are finally going to meet tomorrow. He has been that damn busy!

* The only one who has given me the time of day. He appreciates my value. Sometimes I feel like his assistant, but that isn’t all bad when he has only been here for about a month. We are building this together.

That’s all I’ve got. The client really wants to hire me. I have been exchanging messages with the Director of IT. (In case I haven’t mentioned it, lately, I am a geek girl at heart. I LOVE IT, when it is done well.)
Start date hasn’t been finalized as we are doing all of those wonderful pre-onboarding things that must be done in this day and age. You know, the reference checks, the background checks, the hardware purchases and setup. Oh goody.
Whenever I get to this point in the process, I am always a bit annoyed. Why weren’t these things done sooner? I mean, really?
Don’t get me wrong, I really do understand why agencies don’t do background checks early, in most situations. That would cost them a lot of money, that could be expensed as cost of doing business, but I get it.
What I don’t get is how come this stuff wasn’t already done in this situation? I realize we went a bit out of process, but we definitely took enough time and exerted enough energy to get everything scheduled and rescheduled. At one point in this annoyingly long process I even tried to opt out. IMHO at the end of that discussion, the paperwork should have started.
Reality? I needed this week anyway. There is absolutely no way I could have started any sooner.
This week has been jam-packed with completing tasks that must be done before I go back to work full time. So far, I have scheduled and/or completed a lot of them. I won’t be able to sign off on my last couple of items until Sunday, regardless.
Stay tuned. This adventure is anything but mundane and it is kind of cool to think there might be one or two folks out there who are along for the ride.

Like this:

When this week kicked off, I had a job interview scheduled for this afternoon. This opportunity was a bit out of my comfort zone, but I truly was looking forward to it. I like challenges.
Monday, phone call with the recruiter to go over a couple of items to help improve my success when meeting with these folks. Fortunately, the recruiter forwarded me the profile information for the individuals I was scheduled to meet.
Tuesday, I was out and about taking care of things. The recruiter calls my home phone, not once, but twice in a four hour period. They were smart enough to email me as well, as I am not so good at answering the telephone unless we have scheduled something.
Bottom line, they want to re-schedule the interview for next week. Fine, sure, whatever. I really am interested in doing this interview. We have re-scheduled. I think I might like this job.
Now there’s a qualified statement for you. How am I supposed to know? I have not been forwarded an explicit job description from anyone – not the recruiter nor the client.
The reason I want to do this interview is to be ‘there’. This is not a basic, back-office job with a major corporation doing business-as-usual production. They are new. They produce tangible products. They deal with mundane issues. They are exceeding and their growth curve is phenomenal!
The bulk of my career has been in software-as-a-service products. I haven’t done serious erp in almost 20 years. Supply chain for me meant meeting QoS guidelines. It would be fun apply those principles to actual, physical products. To have the opportunity to participate in the creative process from beginning to end!
Maybe what I need to do is continue developing the definition of what a scrum master does or could do within this company and share it with this particular recruiter?